Originally Posted by
TheSultanofScud
Sure the regionals want less for their copilots. But in the last year, every job I've seen requiring a Learjet SIC has wanted about 2,500 TT, 500-1,000 ME and some turbine time. In a world where disgruntled, unemployed Barbie Jet FOs are a dime a dozen, 750 hours with no ME seems a little bit less than competitive; especially with the early model Learjet's learning curve. Of the guys I know who have flown the slew of RJ models and Lear, it's not even in the same ballpark in terms of performance and instability. Just sayin'.
What's fishy to me is that a company advertises for such peculiarly low times, but mandates that you have a CFI. I know a guy who instructed till he was blue in the face, got hired by a charter outfit, and just about never did an actual 135 flight. Why? Because he was the only pilot at the FBO with a CFI, and they just continued to use him as an instructor. Hence my hesitation to leave instructing for a 135 job when it appears the "charter" work will be little more than instructing at a company that happens to have a 135 cert.
I was hired by Phoenix in Jan. I had 1200TT and 46multi. I love the job and get to visit all kinds of great military bases. The reason they list the time low is not because they want a specific number of hours but because they need a specific type of person who can think on their feet. They want decision makers and you usually get that with CFI's. We do a lot of approaches to min's and fly in a lot of out of the box environments on our military ops that airline guys usually never experience.
Great company but they only hire when they need someone and the turnover rate is very low. They pay better than any regional you will find and you cap around 100K at about 10 years. If you are interested in Phoenix all I can say is stay in touch and good luck. It is a great gig!